Spotify - anyone heard of it?

nope

i mean, i only noticed it because a bunch of videos for my music showed up the other day.

and you didn't give streaming rights to google otherwise? i'd think with their desire to make google play a legit thing they wouldn't just be making illegal streams for funsies

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=495_732htoU

like this one has a link to google play at the bottom - i'd assume these videos are just an extension of whatever lets them have the song on google play

oh that makes sense then, thanks. i just wish they didn't look so lame (and inaccurate).

yeah it would seem you might be a test case

can't find any "rejoice! we are now data dumping to increase the amount of streams we can report" articles so this is probably still in a sort of beta

they're all grouped under 'topics'...i just checked Rebirth Brass Band as an example, and there are a bunch of accurate auto-uploads, but also stuff like this mixed in:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=owP57wzBLKs&list=UUh1-bS8k_fS8c4lT0DX27fw

i applaud taylor swift's decision, btw. the spotify guy countered by pointing out how much money taylor swift makes from his service/ it's several million dollars -- but not impressive in light of her enormous popularity. more important, for artists much less popular than taylor swift (99.99999999999999999999999999999999999% of them, that is), they hardly earn anything at all from the service.

spotify's appeal basically seems to be "well, it's betting than people stealing your work" which is a pretty opportunistic and dubious business model IMO.

If legal streaming went away tomorrow, would album sales see an uptick? I'd be surprised if that happened.

every artist selling a considerable amount of albums over the last two years would seem to disagree with you

I'm just trying to figure out what would shift music/tv/movie consumption back to an ownership model rather than an access model.

essential reading btw: http://pitchfork.com/features/articles/8993-the-cloud/

it's one thing to say that the industry would still be suffering a downturn in a youtubeless, spotifyless world. it's another to think that the ability to rent the music industry for less than the price of a cd has no effect on customer desire to buy a cd

xxpost

nothing, probably?

that doesn't mean that spotify should be allowed to exploit the situation as they have.

(responding to johnny fever)

if swift's decision has done nothing more than bring a spotlight on the shitty royalty structure of spotify and other streaming services, it's been a useful decision. and by no means just for taylor swift.

honestly if i was in an indie band - and could afford it - i'd probably just release vinyl and put some push tracks or "singles" out on streaming services. treat the internet as a radio. give 3-4 songs away, force people to pay for the album if they want more. beyonce did a similar thing with her album, except it was a bundle with video instead of vinyl, and it did great. sure someone will rip the vinyl for illegal downloads, but you weren't gonna get money from those people either way.

I seem to remember in the early days of Spotify (in the US at least), many albums only had some of the songs available to stream and it was a surprise when you found an album that was 100% streamable. Now it's a surprise to find one that isn't.

i can't use spotify b/c it crashes my shitty computer, but that's just me

considering the fact that most indie bands have like 2 or 3 songs that generate a million plays, and then a huge dropoff to the album tracks, i don't see the point of having album tracks on there at all. like fugazi - if they only had three songs from each album, people curious about fugazi would burn through them quicker, and potentially be hungry for more. Instead, "Waiting Room" has a million plus plays, some other 13 songs stuff comes below it, and hardly anybody's checking out end hits.

I do believe streaming is the (near) future of music and all. But there is something highly annoying about the CEO of Spotify and Lefsetz par example wringing hands saying how Taylor Swift is "wrong"' about not putting her music on Spotify. As if a musician nowadays is obligated to do so. Swift (or her team of advisors and finance ppl probably) is in her right to keep her new album from streaming services imho. If the motive is that she earns more money that way because she shifts more physical copies of her album: good for her.

i think they are ostensibly criticizing her characterization of spotify (and other streaming services) rather than questioning her "right" to withdraw her music. but it amounts to nearly the same argument.

yeah I don't get it, most bands would be better off making a couple songs from an album available on spotify, the whole all-you-can-eat buffet structure is so devaluing

also did spotify respond to thom yorke etc by quoting their lyrics and making weird "radiohead come back" playlists? that shit is so gross

You're probably right, but indeed it is nearly the same tbh. She questions Spotify's way of paying out to artists. And whether it's about Swift or some indie artist, this is a valid point. Spotify CEO says a Swift - top of the bill - would've made six million. Fair dues if true, but that's not what matters with Spotify. All artists, big and small, should earn what they deserve. Spotify should be more favorable to them than having to print and burn and fabricate a physical music product. It's about what the lesser gods get in return that truly matters. Thats the only way to wrap streaming into a sustainable business model. Without a fair compensation for them, the smaller ones, the system will not stand.

Xp lol

I've never seen someone state what they think a streaming service should pay out for a single stream of a song. Maybe people have, I don't know. I tend to think Spotify's current pay structure is probably below where it needs to be, but I'm not sure by how much.

Was trying to figure out how much revenue has been generated from old catalogs on Spotify. You can see how many streams individual songs have now. Was looking at Motown hits the other day. "Ain't Too Proud to Beg" by itself has over six million plays. At the $0.007 rate, that's over $42,000 in revenue from just that one song.

And that's part of the thing with streaming. You get paid per play and not right up front. If you have a song people are still listening to fifty years later, that's fifty years of steady revenue.

Hopefully, at some point that revenue will be more than it is now. I'd imagine it will be. But I think there's a prevailing alarmist math going on along the lines of "This song has 10,000 plays and only generated $70 in revenue." 10,000 plays is the equivalent of 100 ten-track albums sold and played ten times each. There wasn't a lot of revenue generated previously by the sale of 100 albums.

If you have a song people are still listening to fifty years later, that's fifty years of steady revenue.

lolololol yeah spotify is going to be around for 50 years hahahahahaha

well the converse would be that if Spotify goes bust in two years' time people will need to "buy" the same music again somehow

Spotify can't even turn a profit, they have the same shitty "build a product, sell it, and then run away" business model as a million startups, they are not in the business of developing a sustainable model of generating income for musicians/performers, that is not their m.o.

xp

well the converse would be that if Spotify goes bust in two years' time people will need to "buy" the same music again somehow

presumably for even less money

their MO, i imagine, is to get lots of money from a IPO and/or from selling to a bigger company.

^^^

The survival of Spotify as a company is not relevant to the point. It's the survival of the streaming model.

well the model doesn't turn a profit

bodes well!

can't turn a profit & developers of product can't make a living, yup true recipe for success right there

the only thing they can deliver is user data, which will collapse as soon as something cheaper/better is available, rinse and repeat until everybody is poor except for asshole CEOs

you make music. you sign with a label to sell your music. unfortunately it's standard practice for them to only give you a small percent of the income, with the majority of expenses taken out of YOUR percent.

then that label decides to let a tech start-up rent your music to customers, in exchange for a small royalty themselves - you're now getting a percent of a percent. the label also gets equity in the start-up, in hopes of a windfall from an IPO/buyout, a circumstance you will not directly benefit from. the label may have also received an advance for their catalog - how much of that came back to you might not be so clear.

the question of "how big should the royalty your label receives be" is kind of beside the point.

There wasn't a lot of revenue generated previously by the sale of 100 albums.

To keep the math simple (and for some artists, it's probably a pretty accurate number), let's say a band's net profit per album is $7. $7 x 100 is $700 vs. $70 from spotify. But that's assuming you can actually sell 100 albums.

People like Taylor Swift are going to make lots of money no matter what, more obscure acts are probably gonna continue to be screwed financially either way (compared to "the way things used to be")

the question of "how big should the royalty your label receives be" is kind of beside the point.

It may be beside the point in terms of how labels are dealing with back catalogs and musician royalties. It's not beside the point in terms of where we go from here unless someone is interested in junking the whole thing and replacing it with ????

let's say a band's net profit per album is $7. $7 x 100 is $700 vs. $70 from spotify.

Maybe DIY. If I'm not mistaken, the average major label royalty rate on a $16.98 CD used to be something like a dollar.

It may be beside the point in terms of how labels are dealing with back catalogs and musician royalties. It's not beside the point in terms of where we go from here unless someone is interested in junking the whole thing and replacing it with ????

reading the thread, even just today's posts might wipe a way a few question marks

streaming will be around in 50 years, and its premium subscribers shall be as numerous as the stars in the sky and as the sand on the seashore.

I'm sorry that you bought those mp3s y'all

never bought an mp3 in my life *flexes*

I think I bought a John Vanderslice album on amazon cloud once

man 2007 what a hoot

Maybe DIY. If I'm not mistaken, the average major label royalty rate on a $16.98 CD used to be something like a dollar.

― timellison, Tuesday, November 11, 2014 5:03 PM (9 minutes ago)

That would be either DIY or once everything's recouped on an indie deal (maybe old school, idk).

I only used 50 years because I was talking about a 50 year old song.

Seriously, though, "I Fought the Law" by the Bobby Fuller Four - 1.7 million plays, about $12,000 in revenue. It would be interesting to see what kind of money that song generated through record and CD (as part of an album) and download sales in the decades previously.